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Tuesday, 12 July 2016

RIVER – BBC TV Series, possibly the best cop drama

I have just completed watching the entire six episodes of
the BBC TV series River and was just
blown by how superlative this series was.

TV series are the new addiction replacing books and cinema
(and also given that for me, good or actually any theatre is not easy to access right now). TV
series are easily accessible and every episode not just one as the earlier appointment viewing format did. Thus binge
watching is more the norm and can be satiating too.

The craze nowadays is to find out a TV series that’s good - Kind of like waiting for the next book from a renowned
author. You are on the lookout for a series that one can
watch over the weekend or savour over a few days, say, while travelling. So one
is following opinion leaders for ‘leads’ – mine include folks like Poonam Saxena,
Vir Sanghvi, and of course Twitter where the new young millennials initiate the trend
on the latest TV series craze.

The reason for this ambling is to highlight the
fact that despite this being a past time for the last few years, I have missed
the RIVER TV series, and a search in my social media also suggests most haven’t
seen it.

Which is a pity, because RIVERbeats them all and IMHO one of the best well
produced series that I have had the pleasure of viewing.

There are quite a few police cop dramas and very familiar plotlines,
tropes and arcs (see its easy to pick up jargon once you read a few reviews? :0)
but despite recognizing them you look forward to it.Recently the one which caught imagination was
the TV series LUTHER from the UK which was good in its first couple of seasons.
But I think River was several several notches above this.Even the other thrillers like the night
manager and London Boy to me paled in front of this, and all of these were
really popular well-liked, and well-produced TV series.

RIVER is a whodunit cop drama series which is narrated
across six one hour episodes and possibly one of the best narrations of a
storyline built beautifully.Like all
good whodunits, the narrative slowly unravels clues and characters and
situations and as you get close to the end you have more or less predicted who
had done it, and almost all such serials or films follow a predictable
denoument.

But in RIVER there’s a lot more. I was blown away by the
acting performances.Nearly all the
actors in RIVER are famous and those you have seen elsewhere, but I think they
put in their best in RIVER.There is a
lot of human frailty, naturalness and ‘mortality’ in their performance which
connected immediately.Even in those
scenes which are inserted for manipulation and seemed a contrived plot filler,
the actors helped raise the bar, you don’t mind it at all.Everyone enacts their roles brilliantly and there's that certain world-weariness and weight that their eyes, body language and dialog delivery conveys which I have rarely seen in recent years. The hero
Stellan skarsgard who I’d seen across Ronin, Mama Mia and other films, was a
big big surprise. The face, the eyes,
the dialogue delivery and absolute transparency in revealing the character’s
feelings are top notch right up with the best. I felt it was worthy of an
Oscar.(yes, pity !!!)

Another facet that was transformative was the lines in the
film.There’s none of that dramatic
flourish in the lines, but they definitely punch you in the gut and bring out
the layers in interactions and character’s emotional depths.You need to watch it and can feel your
eyebrows raise or get gooseflesh as some of these lines transfer their import
to you, delivered brilliantly of course.

And of course the direction.TheTV series grips you like few
do, so much that the initial scenes and episodes need to be re-watched again as
you might have missed quite a few clues. Yes, it sounds quite like the Sixth
Sense, only better.

One of the key dramatic devices and plotlines in this is how
the hero can hear voices of the dead (including eerily a notorious Victorian murderer
hanged over 100 years ago!).But this feels
so natural and worked into the narrative brilliantly and conveys a lot more
than distracts.And like I said, stellan’s
acting helps raise this far far several notches above.Also another good point about the narration
is the fact that unlike other whodunits, there are never any distractions or
misguiding clues or transference, it just moves linearly – and that’s a great
thing because then the focus is purely on the performance and the characters.

I savoured this series over about five days, which is kinda
a record because this was so good, I’d have preferred to binge watch it.But each episode was so good that I sometimes
had to pause within each episode, as some sceneslines and performances were truly moving (episode
2 is outstanding). Even towards the end as it moves to the predictable catching
off the culprit, the performances help remove the artifice and familiar lines
we normally hear on such occasions are delivered in such a powerful but natural
way (without dramatic flourish, I need to add) that it impresses you instead of
the normal jaded response these receive.

One of the reasons for me RIVER worked also, was because of
the fact that this was me discovering a treasure myself.

Most of the TV series were already trending and I was a late
laggard when I saw them. There already was both an expectation as well as
familiarity, and sometimes this was colored by what others had said (though, I
have discovered I agree with very very few reviewers and mostly disappointed by
the hyperbolic praise showered on some , that you eventually get disappointed
instead of enjoying the movie).

In the case of River, it hardly enjoyed much success both in
terms of social media following or discussion – it didn’t even merit any
nominations at the BAFTAs.

Which was a pity, because a real GEM of a TV series has not
been celebrated enough. For me the joy was discovering how it brought out the
fabulous talents of actors that you have been seeing over several years, but only
RIVER managed to extract their best.

Highly recommended. Keep an open mind, focus on the
performance and not the story and it will really strike several notes that will
echo in your minds and hearts.